


The time of the culling and the reaping (of what should and shouldn't be)

by Lavender_Seaglass



Series: And then came the rest [5]
Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: F/M, it all gets kind of messy, think of the children
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-25
Updated: 2014-09-25
Packaged: 2018-02-18 19:05:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2358938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lavender_Seaglass/pseuds/Lavender_Seaglass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The war has been raging for several years, but only now does she realise its toll on him, on them, on everyone and everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The time of the culling and the reaping (of what should and shouldn't be)

Morgan is a royal pain in the arse. Lucina loves him, he's her little brother, but even she cannot keep up with him. He's four years of age, intelligent, and consumed by a verve for anything that life may offer him.

Today they are sharing lessons in reading and foreign tongues. Their other lessons they take separately—Lucina studies several subjects in the company of Cordelia's daughter Severa, while Morgan's instructed either alone or with his cousin Owain. Lucina herself has an innate draw to languages. It's an aptitude that Morgan shares because of his young age, but he doesn't share his sister's enthusiasm for them, which is saying a lot about a child who has so much unstoppable joy. He would much rather read stories, play chess, do maths, or spar with his sister.

But he writes his sentences anyway. He begins translating the passage he's been given.

And then he looks longingly at the window when a length of the snow slides and crashes off of the roof. Though a stern look from Lucina motivates him again, and he is concentrated and quiet, at least until he no longer can deny his urge to chat.

“Lucina, don't you want to be outside?” He doesn't look up from his work, and his voice is high enough to convey to her his petulance.

“Don't _you_ want to? You're a prince, so you have to finish your work before you can go outside to play.”

“Yeah, I guess.” He sighs, but he continues with his task.

She has to wonder, though. Is he really working on his passage, or on another one of his “manoeuvres”? Her brother has an astounding capacity for labouring mentally on two or more tasks simultaneously, which gives him a great ability to conceal his conniving. So there's a chance that their tutor may be the victim of yet another strategic prank. But when she looks at her brother presently, all she can read is his gallant concentration. His tongue's peeping out to the left.

Returning to her own work, Lucina hurries. She can see that he's clearing through his passage now at a rate she cannot match with her own efforts. His material's shorter and less complex, but the obvious alacrity he's exhibiting makes her proud to be his older sister, if there is not also some jealousy pinching, momentarily, at her consciousness.

There's a lot of their mother in him. That makes her glad, too. Like it restores some kind of harmony in the family composition, for her at least, because already she's heard and overheard enough to understand that she's becoming a miniature of her father. Less a mixture of her parents, more a living testimony to his regal character that he is now, and must have been at her age.

Before they're done, their tutor returns with a stack of ledgers for Lucina to go over after the break. He sets them down next her, distracting her for a moment with a slight _thump_ and odour of dusty must. The tutor, a plaintive looking man somewhere in his thirties, nods to the mousy maid who's been standing on-call in a corner. “They'll be ready for their recess in a moment.”

She leaves to get their clothing ready.

Finally, Morgan drops his quill on his exercises and exclaims, “Done!” Having dominated his task, he beams.

“Very good, your grace. Now dry your scroll and leave it for me to look over.”

Lucina doesn't announce anything. She quietly dusts a handful of sand over her work, leans in close to blow it off, double checks that it's dry by running her nail over the last line, and rolls her scroll up with a mind to set a good example. She waits until she's dismissed; afterwards, she walks politely to the castle's west entrance. She's been called a tenacious child by more than one person.

Morgan's already pulled on his shiny leather boots and donned a knitted cap. He's currently struggling to put an overly large woollen jacket on, trying to get two arms in at once despite the maid trying to help him. She stands behind him looking aggrieved and useless.

“Come on, Lu! You're taking forever. Last one out's a dung beetle!”

“Dung beetles are actually quite resilient, you know,” she says. Aware of the maid staring at her, she accepts the help she's given, offering some kind of solace in grateful routine. One arm in, then the other. Though then she buttons her blue coat herself, and deals with getting her soft calfskin boots under her dress on her own. Her mother has introduced her to dresses recently. Lucina's still not used to having other people touching her skirts and tying her laces, no matter how long she has known them. Part of it's also her dislike of the article of clothing. The less she has to mind her dress the better.

The two of them are let out on their half-hour excursion. They are followed, of course, but the two maids and guards keep their distance in the periphery, keep some space open for children to be children. Morgan ignores them and Lucina gives them the occasional nod.

The two of them settle for building snow lanterns. Placed out here they will be able to see there creations at night. And so will their mother, Morgan adds excitedly as he begins to clear superficial holes in the snow. “We'll light'em up with candles and everything, and we'll surprise her. And we can get Frederick to help us make her a bunch of them. It will be like a cake! He said he wanted to make up for her 'birthday fart.'”

“Her birthday 'farce,' Morgan,” Lucina corrects with her tone of voice he tends to heed. “And mum won't like it that we wasted all those candles. Those are rationed right now, you know, and she needs as many as she can get to work.”

“Boo,” Morgan says, and almost immediately his interest in this project diffuses. So to keep having fun, he throws a snowball at Lucina. She throws one back and the snow war is on. It's one that quickly devolves into guerilla tactics, with tree climbings and attempts to shelter in the piles of snow at the castle's side. All of the accumulated snowfall is well above even Lucina's head.

This keeps up until a stray payload hits a window and rattles it in its casements.

They switch to snow angels, made right next to each other. While down on her back and waving her limbs, Lucina notes the crisp blue sky. Personally she hates winter—and the cold and the drafts and the damp and the bad moods that comes with it—but days like today are passable. There's not a cloud in the sky. And the air is so sharp, so clean, so burn-at-your-throat cold, she imagines it could ring like a glass bell.

And, she thinks, the sun's shining on her father. Somewhere out there right at this moment.

Beside her, her brother's flailing his limbs to create a uniquely shaped angel.

“Aren't you making one of yourself?” she asks him.

“No. I'm making one of Bird II.”

“Bird's a lot smaller than that,” Lucina points out.

“But I'm really small too!” To Lucina he says it. He laughs.

“Whatever. Mother's going to look out her window and wonder what's happening to you. She'll be worried.”

“And I'll tell her! Do you think she'd come down too, if she were worried enough?”

“You know Mother is busy.”

“But she's busy _all the time_ ,” Morgan confides to his sister. “She should stop being busy so she can play.”

“Father would say the same thing,” Lucina says. Then, not quite sure why, but because it feels like this is now a part of her role, she is the older sibling, adds quickly, “but she has to be. She's looking after the kingdom while Father's gone, and she's helping win the war, and she's protecting the people, and she's keeping us safe too.”

“That's a lot to do!” Morgan says. He flips over onto his belly and begins to paddle in the snow. “Hey, guess what I am! If I can't be Bird II.”

“Silly,” she says with her gaze trained on the sky. In the corner of her eye she sees a hawk landing on a castle turret. Sees it cinch in its wings.

“You didn't even look at me!”

“You're my brother, you silly.”

He shovels a fistful of snow at her and pouts, but then he rolls over and laughs at the sky. The air's brisk and the day is young with so much of life to still happen in it, and he's onto to making other shapes in the snow. Lucina also moves on eventually.

They make a family of snow forms by the time their tutor's out to bring them, sweating and shivering, back inside.

The hemline of Lucina's dress is soaked. Throughout the rest of her lessens it occasionally brushes against her ankles and makes her shiver despite her stockings. And, for dignity's sake, she has to struggle not to laugh when her tutor is screamed at by a screeching moth someone has planted in the upper drawer of his desk.

 

…

 

The exalt is home at the end of March. Despite the war effort and the scarcity of food the war has exacerbated, the kingdom goes into a short period of intense celebration. Their exalt has returned to them. With him he has brought the Fire Emblem, three of its sacred stones returned to it. A rumour starts that the artefact has taken on a spiritual glow that continues even into the darkest hours of the night. This is given as proof of the king's miraculous battles over the sea: victories that put down enemy troops numbering in the several millions.

Chrom's just happy to be home.

He means for his entrance to be grand and official and dignified as an exalted king should have it, and for his part he manages these criteria admirably. It's the children who break ceremony—once his feet are on the ground and he's taken a few steps in mud, they're upon him from either side.

The best he can manage is an infinitesimally disapproving frown at Lucina to communicate that she knows better so he certainly expected better at least from her. But it breaks quickly against the fact that he has not seen his children in three years.

He watches his wife watching them, and he realises that they are all older.

 

.

 

“So this map is out-of-date?” Robin asks Chrom. She rushes from the desk to the wall and back again, frantically making notes and markings on a panoply of documents she has pasted upon a board lent against the wall of her study. On her desk is a library of foreign scholarship her husband has brought back with him.

He sits at her desk, his tired posture slack in her heavy oak chair. “Yes. There's now a separatist kingdom there to the northeast. A dynast king and his vassals were able to repel three assaults. They're using the smokescreen of the volcano as a natural line of defence, and as a natural border.”

“Interesting,” she says as she writes this all down.

“And here, Yol?” She indicates a point in the middle of the continent. “This gold mine is no longer functioning?”

“Aye. Rebels found out it was crown-owned. They destroyed a dam and flooded the entire area. Several villages are gone, too.”

“They're not on this map.”

“They were there,” Chrom says.

She stops and looks at him, really looks at him, and his body language tells her stories. “Yes, I suppose they were.”

Walking over to him, she puts the quill in her hand behind her ear, brushes her ink-stained hand against the armrest of the chair. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not really.” He gives her a look that, to her, says, _that's enough_. _Please_. “Ask me about something else.” Suddenly, he sits up straight and tall and he scans one of the maps open before him. He scans it with a deliberateness that seems almost frantic contrasted to his laconicness of mere moments ago.

He grabs her hand and places her finger on a point in Valm.

“Here—“ He falls silent.

He tries another spot.

And another.

No good.

Lost in sudden quiescence, he falls back in her chair. She gets down on her knees, her gown rustling against the floor. She looks up at him and holds his hands in hers.

These, she knows, are the signs of of a syndrome she has dubbed war-weariness. It's a condition found in soldiers, written about in accounts of wars spanning across the centuries.

“It's okay, my love.”

“No, it's not. The war 's still on. It's only a matter of time before our next campaign and my next departure from you and the children.”

She gives him a moment.

“Take me with you next time.”

The reflexive response is quicker than ever: a resounding “No.” And when he says it with such righteous passion in his eyes, such conviction in his countenance, she wants to be sick.

“Yes,” she says.

“No, Robin. We've had this discussion already.”

“ _Three years_ ago, Chrom. Before you left. Before you came like _this_. This is obviously killing you, and if you don't die out there, you're going to come home dead regardless.”

He looks at her. In those eyes burns his hatred for war—hatred for men, for men who kill, for men who die. For one breathless moment he squeezes her hands until her bones grind together. And then, once more, the tension goes out of him.

“Robin, what can I say? I can't do this to you. I can't let you do this to yourself. And yet you insist.”

“For our people I insist. You'll be stronger with me there. I'll be stronger there. You know that, Chrom.”

“I do. But that doesn't mean that I like it.”

“Don't be selfish. Think of your duty,” she says, and when she thinks that she's finally made an impact, she doesn't understand how successful she truly is. He jumps up and drags her up with him, backs her up against the wall and holds her there with the fury in his eyes.

He doesn't touch her, though. She's free to leave at any moment.

Her heartbeat echoes in her head, behind her eyes, in her throat. She meets his glare. Behind her, the stone is cold.

“These pieces of paper are nothing,” he whispers. “They're dust. They're not the suffering of the people. They're not the suffering I have caused while doing my duty!”

“You're protecting your people.”

“I'm _killing_ other people to save mine. I am _killing_ women and children whose crops we have stolen and whose land we have left barren. I am responsible for each death on account of my army, and you want to talk to me of protection?”

“Your duty isn't to the world, Chrom.”

“My sister would've managed it! She would've saved everyone without losing a single soul!”

And here it is between them wondrously exposed. No longer echoing, but ringing in their heads. She sees herself in his eyes, his forehead mere centimetres from hers. They are both left vulnerable in the suddenly acknowledged vacuum and if only there were time she would ask, what do you think Emmeryn would think of us now? But there is no air to breathe between them.

“Chrom, I—“ And she doesn't finish, she fights back against the sudden open-mouthed kiss that crashes her backwards. She's caught between him and the wall, and he uses that advantage to lift her up against him. The abruptness of his action forces her to wrap her legs around him to keep her gown from shredding, and the skirts and purple hem of it are pushed up past her knees.

“You're a fool,” she gasps between kisses with too much teeth. He doesn't respond and tries to silence her once more, so she bites his neck.

“Gods be damned!” he seethes between clenched teeth. He tries to back up, or get her up, or do something to regain control. He shifts and supports her with one trembling hand, as the other fumbles to force her chin up and direct her gaze at him.

And then he's spurned on—a calculating Robin cups his crotch with one hand and squeezes with angled fingers. It pays off, it draws out the reaction that she desires because this is a move to show that she _knows._ He crashes with her into the desk, though he's still mindful enough to watch that she's not jilted by the impact. Before laying her down he struggles to clear away the scholarly detritus as the pressure on his loins increases. He works at it, and it's not enough.

He pushes her into the surface of the desk, growling.

She tugs at his drawstrings and finally gets at his arousal.

“Damn it, Robin,” he says as he swallows. All he has to do is push her skirts the rest of the way to where they pool at her waist. He leaves her bodice, lacing, and garters all in place. He captures one of her wrists above her head.

“Get on with it, then,” she insists with a tug. “Take me.” She moves to get up for a kiss, but he leans over her and pushes her down bodily. Keeps her down with a suck on the collarbone. He reaches down and helps her puzzle them together. Out of the corner of his eye he sees the flames of the candles on the desk shaking.

She too is quivering, beneath him.

Her moans resonates in his head.

.

 

Post-coital revelation leave him cold in the wake of what he has done. Robin lays across his arm and curled up against him. The wood of the desk also grounds him with its firm, practical presence. Although she's still technically clothed, her skirts have not been set straight and remain bunched, revealing naked thigh above her stockings. They are still secured by pale blue ribbons. Her skin is white and soft under his scudding fingers.

“You want another go?” she mutters from behind her shoulder.

He kisses the back of that shoulder.

He says nothing. He's overwhelmed by the largeness, the grandness, the tragedy, the eternity of this moment. All of humankind lays behind and ahead of him. And here she is looming in front of him. They are bound by the chains of affection, they will never be separated because they cannot imagine that they will ever be able to break free, that nothing will ever severe what they have so finely wrought together.

“I love you,” they say.

…

 

Lucina can't help smiling at her parents. She knows that they will be leaving before the beginning of the summer, but here she is now.

Presently they, along with a dozen of scrambling servants, are trying to get everything in under the canvass tent before being ruined, but within thirty seconds the sudden downpour has soaked it all: the leather chairs are a lost cause; the guests are drenched down to their small clothes; the air is permeated with the smell of renewed earth.

Shrieking, Morgan runs in crazed patterns among the adults who are panicked for a pointless purpose. He sings, “April showers bring May flowers! April showers will bring May flowers on my birthday!”

Eventually, Lucina sees, her father realises that his efforts to co-ordiante a rescue are not really amounting to much, that this moment could be used for something much more profitable. He runs around with Morgan. He herds his son into a more open area where they rove among the vestigial wild-flowers of the season: bursts of purple and blue, yellow and red lie trampled and water-weighed at their galloping feet.

Smiling, Lucina joins them.

Her father scoops her up and places her on his shoulders, from whence she can see the entirety of her present world. The castle's a backdrop faraway. Her father below her is just steps behind her brother.

She sees her mother, too. Auntie Lissa, cousin Owain, and _his_ father Libra are not far behind.

Lucina's ten years old today, and her whole family is affected by this moment. It's infectious, it's spreading to them all, it's like the unreasonable joy experienced when you see a cherished one fulfilled.

 

…

 

The vanquished foe is dissolving in a riot of electric purple chaos. The sparks are neon and brigther than a soul.

Chrom turns to her. There's a decade's relief writ openly on his face. And he is open, he can be open.

This is a frisson.

In a matter of seconds it's ruined by a thing he doesn't see, only hears. _Damn you both_ its crackling screams.The pair of them together.

But Robin moves to push him out of the blast's trajectory. This, she figures in a trice, is easy enough. And, judging by the size of it and the desperate last-stand state of their foe, it's survivable. If she has somehow calculated incorrectly then it's only her life that's at risk. Her husband's safe, her family their father, and she only catches a second of the uncomprehending question in his gaze.

When she comes to, he's cradling her. Praising her. Close and caught in the moment.

She thinks that her calculations were correct. The second thing she thinks is to reach out to him, to wipe away a rivulet of his sweat.

A fire still rages behind them but Chrom says that they have won. Finally. He pulls her up so that she can see this result of their combined labour.

And then she loses control.

She can see him but she can't hear him. She can only witness the materialising of her magic, the thrusting of into his vulnerable stomach, the reaching of his hand as he stumbles away from her.

He holds his wound. He gasps. He supports himself with his own weight and will long enough to tell her to _run_. In his last moments he's looking out for her.

_What of Lucina? Or Morgan? Our people?_

He falls to the ground, already dead of natural causes.

As for her, she's alive, but her personhood is about to become a minor detail. So the emotions, fears, realisations that register will not matter.

She's blighted out.

 

…

 

**.**

 

**.**

 

 

Two days before her thirteenth birthday, Lucina's pulled out of her midday maths lesson. Morgan stays behind. He continues working diligently to marshal the unruly rows of figures before him into a correct form. She can see him from the hallway.

The page hands her a long parcel. It would be unassuming if not for the heaviness of it. She knows exactly what it is before holding it.

“I was asked to deliver this to, your grace.”

“You may go,” she says with the dignity of a princess.

He bows and departs.

The weight of it is real in her hands. Already she can tell that the balance of it will be perfect. She will slash open miracles with this blade.

But it's the anonymous note that does it.

It says: _your father would be proud_ and she reads over and over again. Her tears stream silent.

After two years astray, Falchion has found its home in her hands that grip it steadily no matter how much they shake.

Now if only her mother would return home, too.

 


End file.
